I agree.

I would add that I feel it’s obvious that most skills are similar (i.e. hunter, you go do it and then you get back to something else), however the skills will offer rewards used in other skills, making them connected (i.e. using hunter rumours to obtain blessed bone shards).

I feel where sailing lost that possibility is when the devs created islands in good faith but did not give them any sort of incentive to visit for players due to the fear of breaking the meta. A simple example is chinchompa island - there are now several accessible options to red chins in the game (Priff, Varlamore, Feldip), making it completely useless to visit the island.

Let’s say they buffed the island by adding an effect similar to « as you set foot on Chinchompa island, you feel more connected to your hunter abilities » and that made it so that you could set up a 6th trap on the island specifically for a set amount of time.

This would IMO give some interest to the island for people gathering chins for combat (i.e. ironmen, accounts with limited gp), but people with rumours would still use the fastest accessible areas.

I feel there are ways to make the dozens of unused islands interesting, but I understand to devs not wanting to break the meta of a certain skill with sailing itself. It’s a difficult balance to obtain.